Hi, my name is Mike, I'm a 10th grader with APD in Canada. Throughout elementary I've gone through numerous challenges facing my problem. Constantly I've had teachers who wouldn't understand the situation, even when they think they did. Even my parents, think they understand it, but still at many times get mad at me or just in general disregard it sometimes.

You see, one of the huge annoyances with having the problem, is the lack of overall understanding (and in many times, care) that others have for the disorder. From elementary, I believe it was early grade 5 that they diagnosed the problem. My mom told one of the teachers (we had 2, I think cause one was a student teacher). The teacher said she wouldn't say anything to the students about the problem at all, which turned out to be a lie. One day when I was out of the room she told the entire class. After telling the students, some looked at me weird, some even made fun of me at some points. One of the things that made it very easy for people was that I was an easy target. I took offence fairly easily and I was taken advantage of because I'm a nice person. I would often give things away to others because it made me feel good and when people asked for things I couldn't really say no. One of the things that I really didn't like was when my other grade 5 teacher (the one who was the regular guy), set a bad example for the students. Every time I would repeat what I thought he said (when I didn't even realize I heard wrong) he would say, "Yooouree nott listening Michael!!" in a catchy tone.

Everyone in the class would laugh at me, including him, and I really felt 'out of place'. It didn't seem fair to me that I should be made fun of for something I couldn't control. Throughout my life I've had teachers upon teachers yell at me to "focus" or "pay attention" when I am quite honestly trying harder than the majority of students. If I sit there focusing as hard as I can, and I still miss half of the information, I feel stuck. I was told by my mom that I should always make sure to ask questions to clarify things, which would often end up not working for a number of reasons. Sometimes if they did explain something, it wasn't enough, because it was at many points along the way that I missed things. Sometimes I didn't want to have to ask about something again, if I still missed part of what they repeated. Then at other times, they would just get frustrated at me, as if there was something wrong with me. I would get in trouble for things even when I wasn't trying to behave badly or anything. It also doesn't help that in some situations, I have difficulty keeping a straight face. It's as if my muscles are forcing me to smile, reflecting what I truly feel falsely. I try to bite on my cheeks hard to stop the smiling when it got to that point, which only caused me to get cuts, etc.

What really bothers me is I just want to feel like a normal person. I'm literally not joking when I say any teacher I/my parents have ever told about my disability, it has never turned out well. I don't want to be looked at weird, I don't want to exactly be thought of as trying to be "immature" or anything  by other students or made fun of for my disability. I find it difficult to focus, sometimes, in general. I'm a visual learner though, and the computer is one of the only things that I can focus well with. When I have a pen/pencil and paper, I don't do that well. I have super messy writing, and even when I write slow, it is still unreadable. I remember in elementary when I took an hour and a half to write something, I had worked realllly hard on it, just to make it neat, and it was only just comparable to what somebody else did in fifteen minutes. When you have a teacher talking to you for a long time, it is hard to take it in. I can't exactly do notes, because I won't hear it right, and will have to guess the missing pieces. Then at other times, if we're not finished something, we will have finish it while a video is on, or while the teacher is talking about something else, and we're expected to do them both. Not only can I not write something and take in what the teacher is saying, but it's hard to even just write something while there is other noise. There is always noise and then when everything is quiet, I can't focus. It drives me crazy because even if I ask if we can not do something the way the teacher says because "I can't do two things at once", I'll be told that I have to learn to. I'm sorry, but I can't learn to get over something like a disability. People tell me I need to learn to hear two things at once, or tune things out while doing a piece of work. But they don't freaking understand that it is not physically possible. There's a reason it's a disability. You don't magically gain the ability to do something like this; you just can't, and it won't change. My life has been hell basically since I can remember. Elementary sucked, and all three years of junior high were horrible. Now, even in highschool, things aren't even better at all. It's bad enough to have a problem like this, but to be made fun of to no end mainly because of it, is just unbearable. Like I sit here, and I'm trying to get things down, and I still haven't even scraped the surface. There is so many things I could go on about, so many occurrences that it's gotten to the point that I can't even remember them. I hardly remember any of my life, all I remember is the bad parts of it, because the bad parts greatly outweighed the good parts. I don't understand what is wrong with being a nice person, and having something that is uncontrollable, that still makes others justify being assholes to me. I'm not mean to others, and if I see an injustice happening, I won't be by stander. I won't be the person who stood on the sidelines, being just as bad as the people making fun of the victims themselves. I stand up for people in these cases, which obviously, worsens my case greater.

I don't feel like writing anymore for the moment, but uhh, hi.